The year has turned a quarter, and I’m loving the open windows and fresh breezes. I’m wearing a sundress! Ian and I had some much-needed time out together this weekend and it was wonderful. Some spring cleaning is in order, but you needn’t worry because we won’t try to do it all at once. We like to ease into these things a little bit each day. My dear hubby is currently tackling his pile of ironing.

I’ve pulled the shorts from older cousins out of the garage for Lucas to wear in the coming weeks and given away a box, a giant bag, and two grocery sacks of toddler clothes to two darling boys we know. Out with the old and too-small!

Lucas and I have planted some seeds straight into the ground, which is something I’ve never had much luck with before. We figure it’s unlikely we’ll have anymore frost, and since we’ll probably get several more rains we’ll take advantage of the free water. We planted some beans, red chard, spinach, poppies, nasturtiums, and morning glories, all from seed packets I had lying around. I don’t know if we’ll get lucky and get some shoots, but it was worth a shot and better than discarding seeds from past years.

We have gathered together some of our spring books to enjoy. Here are some favorites that we own.

• Spring: Poems, Songs and Stories, Winstones Press
• The Spring Equinox: Celebrating the Greening of the Earth, by Ellen Jackson
• When the Earth Wakes, by Ani Rucki
• Too Many Rabbits and Other Fingerplays About Animals, Nature, Weather, and the Universe, by Kay Cooper
• The Lion and the Little Red Bird, by Elisa Kleven
• The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, by DuBose Heyward
• The Golden Egg Book, by Margaret Wise Brown
• Selected spring poems from The Chidren’s Hour Best Loved Poems, vol 5
• Flower Fairies of the Spring, by Cecily Mary Barker
• Best Hikes with Children Around Sacramento, Bill McMillon

Hope you”re enjoying spring weather, spring cleaning, and spring reading, too!

The leprechauns visited last night! Thankfully we left out some goodies for them, so they didn’t feel the need to play tricks on us.

We gave them honey, cream, and brownies and Lucas chose to decorate the plate with lots of his own sparkly treasures.

And of course there were some brownies for us.

This morning we discovered all the cream, honey, and brownies were gone! Gold nuggets, gold dust, and gold beads were found in our home and on the offering plate we left outside. Some lucky four-leafed shamrocks were left for Asher and Lucas. Lucas asked me how big the leprechauns are. I said, “I don’t know because I’ve never seen one, but I have always imagined them to be about knee-high.”

At Lucas’s school, the leprechauns made mischief. When we arrived in the morning we found that classroom chairs had been stacked to the ceiling! Students’ possessions were mixed up and in disarray. The chalk board said Friday, not Wednesday! All sorts of things were out of whack. Such shenanigans! Lucas and his buddy described the day as “pretty much a whole day of recess,” and given that his face was green with chalk dust at the end of the day, I think that means they had great fun.

We had a supper of corned beef and cabbage, carrots, onions, and celery with roasted red potatoes and garlic. Lucas’s buddy and the boy’s mom and brother ate with us. Ian brought home some Guinness and we rocked out to the Pogues, Dropkick Murphys, and Black 47.

All in all, just about perfect. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

This was Lucas’s entertainment for last Friday evening: a homemade, hand-sewn blank notebook with a felt cover. His idea. His supplies. His execution. All his.

While I sat watching with my mouth agape and he confidently stitched the cover on, he reminded me that he already had loads of experience with this sort of thing because he went to a bookmaking day camp last summer, where he made two different styles of books.

He then ruled the pages and proceeded to fill them up with fantastical water creatures chaotically drawn in classic, blue ball-point pen ink.

Saint Patrick’s Day is coming and I have to admit, it’s a holiday that I quite like. I just always have liked it; don’t really know why. I have always made sure not to be pinched by wearing plenty of green on Saint Patrick’s Day.

I was inspired to needle-felt a Saint Patrick, mainly to see if I could make a doll this big. He’s almost 12 inches tall and made entirely out of wool roving, two pipe cleaners, and some sort of silky fiber that Parnasus gave me a long time ago, which was perfect for his soft beard and hair. I don’t really know what it is. His bishop’s hat sports a jaunty shamrock, which is kind of like a cross, too, and it gives a nature connection that I appreciate. I felted little green snakes onto Patrick’s robes. I’m happy with how he turned out! (Now I know I can make a similar Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, or seasonal doll like Queen Summer or King Winter, or whatever.)

Saint Patrick’s Day isn’t a big holiday in the Waldorf school, which could be because it falls just before the spring equinox and Easter. Since Lucas is in second grade this year and the curriculum has focused on lots of stories about saints, I figured we would bring Saint Patrick into our home.

Some very brief online research reveals that the legend of Saint Patrick is that he drove all the snakes out of Ireland, which may be a metaphor of Christianity conquering the indigenous, pagan (snaky) religion. I also found plenty of sites that claimed this story and its interpretation was nonsense. Probably Ireland never had snakes. It’s known that Patrick was the son of a wealthy Roman-British family who was captured, taken to Ireland, and enslaved for six years. Later he escaped and returned to Britain, entered the priesthood and studied for years, and then became a missionary in Ireland again, where he converted people to Christianity for twenty years. An angel told him in a dream to convert the Irish. He may have used the three-lobed shamrock to teach the Irish people about the Holy Trinity. Who knows?

The Dear Little Shamrock

There’s a dear little plant that grows in Ireland.
‘Twas Saint Patrick himself sure that set it.
And the sun on his labor with pleasure did smile.
And a tear from his eyes oft-times wet it.
It grows thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
And it’s called the dear little Shamrock of Ireland.

That dear little plant still grows in our land,
Fresh and fair as the daughters of Erin,
Whose smiles can bewitch, and whose eyes can command,
In each climate they ever appear in:
For they shine thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
Just like their own dear little Shamrock of Ireland.

That dear little plant that springs from our soil,
When its three little leaves are extended,
Denotes from the stalk we together should toil,
And ourselves by ourselves be befriended.
And still thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
From one root should branch, like the Shamrock of Ireland.

—Andrew Cherry

Did you catch that sky last night? After the rain, my little corner of the world was ablaze with the sunset spilling over every wet surface it could find.

And someone I know just had to splash about in the lava.

Beauty sometimes washes over even my suburban, sidewalk-lacking street. All you have to do is notice.

Later this month we’ll be attending Love Auction #9 at the Sacramento Waldorf School, the annual fundraiser auction. I’m finishing my handcrafted items to donate by Friday. Here’s a peek:

A birthday bunting (or playroom/bedroom decoration) made from three recycled, thrifted, 100% cotton shirts that my friend, Anne, found and gave to me. I love the variegated fabric; it lends a definite Waldorf, watercolory feel to the bunting. The bunting is three yards long. (I’ve never cut up a garment before to salvage the fabric for another purpose. It felt very strange, but oddly satisfying.)

A birthday crown (or dress-up crown) for a boy or a girl (or a king or queen or wizard or astronomer) made from 70% wool felt and sewed by hand. I started this on the plane to New Jersey a week ago. The nifty thread-cutting pendant my mom let me borrow was very useful! Sewing on the plane was a soothing way to pass some time. I still have to put the elastic on the back of the crown to finish it off.

Last year, my donation was needle-felted gnomes and a fairy and a book of Tiptoes Lightly stories. No idea how to assign a value to these items for the school to use as a starting bid. Suggestions?

This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was about four years old, sitting on the floor of Dotty’s home and playing with her “Sleeping Beauty”-style spinning wheel.

I took a spinning class this weekend from my new friends at Syrendell. (Lucky for me they are local!) Jennifer Tan and her daughter, Joey, taught us how to use the drop spindle and let us try spinning on a wheel, too. The drop spindle is fairly simple in concept and it didn’t take too long to catch on. My first attempt is on the far right of the photo below. I started with a brown wool roving, then spun some white Merino wool with tencil, then tried a muted green/blue wool. It’s all on one skein. It’s lumpy and wonky and imperfect and I love it!

We got to create batts of prepared wool fiber on a drum carder, which felt surprisingly like painting with wool and created such a gorgeous, fluffy, ready-to-spin batt. I loved laying out the colors and wondering how they might combine in the spun yarn.

I bought a spindle for myself and took home the two batts of fiber I had prepared, one green and one rainbow. On Saturday afternoon, I spun the green into yarn and Lucas helped me. He was really curious and I think we can do this together. On Sunday, I spun the rainbow fiber and it was wonderful! It has lumps and places that are over- or underspun. Making perfectly even, consistent yarn is clearly not something one learns in a day!

Now I have something else to do with all that wool roving I’ve bought over the years for needle-felting.

Oh what a time we had!

We decided to crack open the wonderful cheesemaking kit that our dear friends Tox and Shannon brought us. This past Saturday we made a special trek to Whole Foods for pasturized (not ultra pasturized) whole milk. We probably can get it elsewhere, but weren’t certain where, and we were quite sure we could find what we needed there. Whole Foods also has raw milk, which is supposed to be best for cheese, but as it was really pricey, we decided not to use raw milk on the first try. (You know, in case the magic didn’t work.)

Lucas dissolved the citric acid in chlorine-free water.

The kit came with everything we needed except the milk and the chlorine-free water.

Here’s our milk, frothy and cooking.

We slowly heated the milk to 90° F, added the rennet, and waited for it to coagulate the milk solids.

Then we tested to see if it had done it’s job. Yep, the whey was clearish and the milk solids (curds) were congealed and looked like custard.

I think Asher is praying to the goddess of milk, Hathor, here. Daddy carefully cut the curds.

The curds were returned to the heat and heated to 110° F. We had to make a water bath (185° F) and dip our colander full of mozzarella curds into the hot water. This made them elastic and stretchable!

Then we were able to   s  t  r  e  t  c  h our mozzarella (we ate some at this point). Stretching elongates the proteins (but I don’t know what that means).

We formed it into our heart shape. It cooled in its ice bath for 10 minutes and voilà, MOZZARELLA CHEESE!

Kitchen science is awesome. Now here’s the crazy part: If we had been better prepared and more experienced, we could have taken the whey, the byproduct of the mozzarella, and make … more cheese from it. The whey must be used within three hours though, and we weren’t prepared to start a new cheesemaking project then. It was time to eat!

Thanks, Tox and Shannon!

Lucas has been enjoying playing with Fuse Beads lately. You arrange them standing on end in patterns and then fuse them together with a clothes iron.

Lucas quickly tired of following the suggested patterns and created a whole army of little guys. They each have a name, though I can’t tell you what the names are; I could not pronounce them even if I remembered them.

Here are a few familiar characters: a fused R2D2 and a Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader ready to fuse. I’d better get on that!

For this one, he used the fuse beads in a different way. Waldorf kids are cool.